Club Culture Research Articles

‘Just Another Outing in a Boat’: Findings from the Evaluation of the Mixed Ability Sport Development Programme

Article 30 (5a) of the UNCRPD states that participation in mainstream sport should be a right for all individuals. However, many disabled people still face barriers to participation, and provision remains segregated and/or determined, at least in part, by the nature and degree of impairment. This paper explores the Mixed Ability (MA) model as an innovative approach to facilitating disabled people’s participation in, and engagement with, mainstream sport. It outlines findings from an evaluation of the Sport England-funded Mixed Ability Sport Development Programme, which saw the MA model trialed in a variety of sports. A participatory research design was employed to generate data with key stakeholder groups involved in the design and delivery of programme activities, as well as with MA participants. Analysis of the data identified three core themes: (i) defining MA sport; (ii) the impacts of MA sport; and (iii) challenges and enablers of MA sport. In discussing these, it is argued that the MA model can be a powerful approach to inclusion and help to shape meaningful change. Indeed, the data suggest that the impacts of MA activities can extend beyond the individual level and influence shifts in both sports club culture and wider perceptions around disability. The paper closes by considering the implications of the research and outlines recommendations for future practice in this area.

The Association of Black Psychiatrists-UK Culture Club: The Experience So Far and Proposed Future Directions

AimsMedia coverage and representations in popular culture can positively and negatively impact wider social attitudes to mental health and illness.In the light of the George Floyd and Tyre Nichols murders and the discussion about racism and its legacy on Black mental health, it has become especially important to discuss the effect of popular culture on Black mental health and vice-versa. The Culture Club was formed in 2021 as an offshoot of the Association of Black Psychiatrists-UK (ABP-UK) with the aim of analysing popular culture and black mental health with a view towards finding recurring themes about Black mental health and our lived experiences of racism and racial trauma. The Culture Club comprises doctors at all levels and medical students affiliated with ABP-UK. We initially started off reviewing films as the cinema offers an accessible and enjoyable way to explore the link between popular culture and mental health. The proposed future direction is to further incorporate other media to offer a more holistic experience and to further support public education efforts.MethodsMedia from across the world featuring the intersection of racial trauma and black mental health are selected. The feature is watched individually, with a club discussion occurring virtually. Discussions are centred on the plot, characters, mental health correlations, and themes relative to our own lived experiences. We then note major or recurring themes for further exploration.ResultsTo date, we have discussed “Thirteenth”, a documentary by Ava DuVernay, “Da Five Bloods” by Spike Lee, “Red, White and Blue” by Steve McQueen, The Nollywood blockbuster series “Blood Sisters” created by Temidayo Makanjuola and “Queen and Slim” by Melina Matsoukas.The emerging critical themes from the screenings and our lived experiences are systemic racism, differential attainment, vicarious trauma, stigma and its impact on mental health, and the law.ConclusionKey themes underpin black mental health and racial trauma. These themes, if studied further, could potentially be targeted to improve the lived black experience and, in turn, black mental health.Popular culture remains an important tool in understanding Black mental health.We welcome further ideas towards improving the culture club experience.

Pathways to participation in gymnastics for children with disability

Purpose To understand the pathways of children with disability participating in gymnastics in Victoria, Australia. Materials and methods A sequential explanatory mixed-method study design was used. Participants completed an online survey, with selected participants purposively invited to undertake semi-structured interviews via videoconference. Quantitative survey data was analysed using descriptive statistics with preliminary findings informing the invitation of interview participants and refinement of interview questions. Qualitative survey and interview data were analysed together using thematic analysis to create themes. Data was combined to create a conceptual model. Results Fifty-eight parents consented to participate in the study with eight interviews conducted. Key themes were: (1) Tailored, accessible, supportive environments and programs make a difference, (2) An explicitly inclusive club culture helps young people get and stay involved, (3) Coach knowledge about engaging children with disability is valued, (4) Enjoyment, recognition, and achievement facilitate ongoing participation, and (5) Gymnastics has physical and social benefits for children with disability. The findings inform a conceptual model that describes three key stages along a pathway to participation including; choosing gymnastics as a sport, selecting a club, and ongoing participation. Conclusion To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore participation of children with disability in gymnastics in Australia. These findings provide guidance to those supporting children with disability to participate in gymnastics (e.g., policy makers, club owners, coaches, and allied health professionals) regarding creating more inclusive environments and experiences at each stage of participation.

Paratopia: anime, school clubs, and the aims of education

Over the past twenty years, in the worlds of popular media revolving around manga, anime, light novels, and games, there has been an explosion of interest in extracurricular activities (bukatsu) taking place within school clubs (katsudō kurabu or katsudō sakkuru). The rise and explosion of school clubs in popular culture has occurred alongside a wave of heated debates about Japanese education that culminated in a series of education reforms, commonly discussed and implemented under the rubric of yutori kyōiku or ‘relaxed education’. To open a dialogue between Japanese popular culture and education, this essay examines the aims of Japanese education from two perspectives: the perspective of the history and sociology of education (the discourses, debates, and policies that have shaped curricular and extracurricular activities), and the perspective of popular culture, with an emphasis on extracurricular activities related to school clubs as they are explored in anime or Japanese animation. It considers how the historical formation of ideals for Japanese education, the global rise of schooled society, and the legacy of sports and culture clubs have shaped the poetics of school realism in anime and have contributed to its global appeal. This essay thus shows how the boom of culture clubs in anime serves to resituate and redirect the social and historical ideals of Japanese education.

Musical communities of sexual minorities

Wroclaw, one of the largest cities in Poland, is full of events taking place in public space, including protests. Using examples taken from the 10th Wroclaw Equality March in 2018, it can be shown that specific musical works become a weapon in the struggle for recognition of the proclaimed values. The study traces the auditory dimension of protests, the role of music in creating a community and the place of such events in the soundscape of a contemporary city. Then the study presents these mechanisms on selected musical examples. Particular attention is paid to the musical communities, because the sound not only accompanies the protests it strengthens the sense of solidarity between the participants. The event is interpreted as a kind of spectacle that constitutes a space for self-expression and the articulation of the postulates of its participants, accompanied by a characteristic soundtrack. It consists mainly of popular music performed by artists either belonging to sexual minorities or being recognized as icons of the community. The study presents the role of disco music and club culture as well as the aesthetics of the camp as crucial for LGBT+ people seeking space for their expression, which is oppositional to the dominant system of values based on gender dualism. Seemingly simple or silly songs can have a deeper meaning and are a key element in shaping a certain community.

Playing the Police with the Agitprop Troupes of Weimar Germany

Germany's amateur agitprop theatre movement produced some of the most popular, pervasive, and politically contentious art in the Weimar Republic, not least because of the way performers inserted themselves into the fabric of working-class life with the unequivocal intention of politicizing audiences. Germany's first agitprop troupes formed within youth clubs affiliated with the Communist Party (KPD) around 1925, but the movement quickly grew beyond established club culture, with troupes sprouting up “like mushrooms,” as one critic of the period put it. By 1929 police estimated there were about two hundred self-proclaimed agitprop troupes spread across Germany, all pursuing a transparently aggressive political agenda: to turn the theatre into a site of revolutionary class struggle. If the Weimar period saw an unprecedented mixing of art and politics, agitprop took this tendency to the extreme by declaring theatre to be a weapon in the hands of the proletariat. As the slogan of the 1931 International Meeting of Agitprop Troupes in Cologne put it: “Workers’ theatre is class struggle.”

Elite women's clubs in the 1930s across three Australian states: a prosopographical study

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the clubs and club memberships of 491 elite women in three eastern Australian states in the 1930s. It is the second part of a descriptive analysis of these women's biographical sketches in Who's Who-type collections, now out of copyright, published in Australia in the 1930s: Victoria (1934), New South Wales (1936) and Queensland (1939).Design/methodology/approachUsing mixed methods within a prosopographical approach, described fully in the first paper on these data, this is mainly a quantitative analysis. After the numbers of club memberships of the women are given and compared on a state-by-state basis, a taxonomy of five main types of clubs was created and the clubs and club memberships listed for each of them. The five types are: (1) social and cultural clubs; (2) sporting clubs; (3) imperial, national and patriotic clubs; (4) professional clubs; and (5) service and educational clubs. The paper then explores the similarities and variations at the state level in the women's club memberships across the five types. It should be noted that the article does not include charities to which the women contributed because they required a separate typology and analysis to be taken up elsewhere.FindingsThe paper frames women's clubs as informal educative networks where women were able to acquire the knowledge and skills in modernity for effective participation in the public sphere. The analysis shows that three-quarters of the 491 women were members of one club or more. Overall, the women listed 340 separate clubs with 1,029 memberships across the five types. The state-by-state analysis giving lists of clubs, and numbers of memberships per club in each type, enumerated variations of women's clubs at the state level. Overall, the analysis suggests that the “club habit” for such women was a substantial historical phenomenon at this time.Originality/valueThis is the first study to encompass women's club memberships across three Australian states. Quantification of women's involvement in clubs has proved difficult, however, by using a prosopographical approach, this study creates a unique quantitative picture of the club data contained in 491 elite women's biographical sketches from the 1930s.

The role of the "third place" in the practices of youth leisure: house party (home party) as a social event

The problem of youth leisure is a frequent object of study in modern sociology. However, Russian scientists are increasingly paying attention to club culture and various youth subcultures, often overlooking the social phenomenon of house parties. The article analyses the results of individual studies of house parties in the USA, Holland, Denmark, the UK (skins party), the former USSR (“kvartirnik”/home gig) and modern Russia (“vpiska” (inclusion)/ shubz and its various formats). For the methodological basis of the study two approaches are used. The approach of E. Hoffmann, that allows us to study a house party as a social event of an entertaining nature, and the theory by R. Oldenburg of the “third place”, that a house becomes during a party. The article touches upon the historical aspect of house parties, their golden age dating back to the 19th century in the UK. In the context of the sacredness of the event and institutional freedom, a house party is compared to a “crash pad” commune of the hippie subculture. The researchers note the possibility of forming a hangout (“tusovka”) as a series of house parties opp osing disciplinary culture and social hierarchy. Special attention is paid to the issue of alcohol consumption as a ritual of collective intoxication during house parties and drinking games. The concept of a home quasi-party is introduced, which main purpose is not entertainment, but education, political agitation or direct sales. The main idea of the article is to reflect not only the negative, but also the positive socio-cultural functions of a house party, that is considered by some researchers as an exclusively deviant and/or criminogenic form of leisure of the modern youth.

My Own Creation as a Dynamic Subcultural Objectified Authenticity of Adult Fans of LEGO

My Own Creation as a Dynamic Subcultural Objectified Authenticity of Adult Fans of LEGO

"It's always the bare minimum" - A qualitative study of players' experiences of tackle coaching in women's rugby union.

Tackle coaching forms a cornerstone of training in rugby and is designed to enhance performance and mitigate tackle injury. The athlete voice can help key stakeholders understand the psychosocial determinants that shape skill development in relation to tackle coaching. We aimed to capture player experiences of tackle coaching in women's rugby union. Qualitative study using the grounded theory approach. Current women rugby union players, with at least 1-year senior level experience, were recruited from Europe, Africa and North America between December 2021 and March 2022 to participate in the study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed in line with grounded theory coding procedures. The 21 players were aged 20-48 years with a mean 10.6 years of rugby playing experience. Analysis revealed that the experiences of tackle coaching that shaped women's tackle skill development and sense of preparedness ranged from constraining to empowering, and gender was a pivotal influence in creating meaning. Participants expected and accepted the bare minimum in tackle coaching as the price that they had to pay for inclusion in rugby. Participants' experiences of tackle coaching were entangled in inequitable club structures and cultures where men's rugby is the norm. Empowering tackle coaching in women's rugby union must be bespoke to the given context and the needs of women players. The recommendations offered in this paper encourage discussion as to how best to empower women's tackle development in rugby.

Civilizational dissent at late 1990’s: body, fashion and club cultures in contemporary society

British fashion of the 1990s manifests a fin-de-siècle social anxiety. Facing a systemic crisis of culture, some designers embodied the sociological concepts of risk and carnivalization in their creations. This attitude is reflected in the emergence of themes such as the wasted look and abject aesthetics, epistemological solutions arising from a legacy of grunge experiences. Based on a documental approach, materialized in media and art works, to some British fashion shows of the 1990s, we will discuss in this article several aspects of the relationships between body, risk, carnival and fashion, focusing on the works of British designers and its manifestation in the hidden economies (club cultures scenes included), in which Alexander McQueen played a central role.

Scoring the Original Soundtrack of an Escape Room

Through the example of Nobody – Vis et ressens (Nice, France, 2021), this article sheds light on the musical creation process involved in the conception of an automatized escape room, where participants experience a multimodal experience (sound, light, scenery, video) driven by an original scenario. As the composer, sound designer, and computer music designer, I propose to study Nobody as a playful game. I show how current ludomusicology insights can be used and adapted to a game that is played in a physical space. After first exposing considerations of both technical and aesthetic aspects, I explain the artistic choices made for creating the soundtrack of six interactive puzzles. Through practice-led research of these different mini music games, I analyze how the influence of electronic dance music (EDM) and related club culture are melded together into the development of the plot and its retro-futuristic theme. I show how constraints forced me to adapt the audio content yet also opened a wide range of musical possibilities. The analysis helps clarify how what I call “game music” differs from “background music”. Moreover, the discussion highlights compositional issues that are similar to video game music-making and shows that escape rooms need to be studied further within the field of ludomusicology. Although some of the analytical tools remain valid because of their technical aspect (transition types, typology of music games, transition speed quantization) or their theoretical aspects (ALI model, branching-layering concept, triple lock of synchronization), traditional concepts such as “immersion” or “game feel” need to be questioned for escape room games, as that type of game takes place in a physical space.

James S. Griffith: Remembering “Big Jim” (1935–2021)

James S. Griffith: Remembering “Big Jim” (1935–2021)

Oral contraceptive use in Premiership and Championship women’s rugby union: perceived symptomology, management strategies, and performance and wellness effects

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of oral contraceptive use in domestic rugby union, to compare symptomology by contraceptive use, and to determine symptom management strategies. Additionally, to characterise the perceived influence of oral contraceptive use and non-use on wellness and performance. A total of 238 Premiership and Championship women’s rugby union players completed an online questionnaire. The survey was comprised of questions relating to player characteristics, hormonal or non-hormonal contraceptive characteristics, perceived symptomology, symptom management strategies, and performance and wellness characteristics. The prevalence of oral contraceptive users was 26%. Non-hormonal contraceptive users reported greater perceived negative symptomology (i.e., back pain, nausea, sore breasts) and performance and wellness effects (i.e., fatigue, stress, mood, concentration, power, match-play) than oral contraceptive users. The most common symptom management strategies were medication (33%), nutritional interventions (20%), and training modulation (20%). Twelve percent of players had previously spoken to staff about their menstrual cycle (i.e., regular and irregular) or contraceptive use. The most common barriers to speaking to staff were ‘male staff’ (29%) and ‘club culture’ (24%). The importance of assisting non-hormonal contraceptive users in managing symptoms is evident. Emphasis on overcoming barriers to staff-player dialogue regarding menstrual/contraceptive cycle is required.

Cinema and Television as Factors of Rave Culture Spreading in Ukraine

The purpose of the research is to investigate and analyze the main stages of the club techno culture formation in Ukraine in the context of Ukrainian audiovisual art development. The realization of this goal involves solving the following tasks: to determine the role played by cinema, television, and modern media in the growth of techno music popularity; to prove the importance of electronic music in the context of the modern Ukrainian techno culture formation; to learn about the role of club life in shaping the image of a modern country. The research methodology consists in the application of the general scientific principle of objectivity, cultural, structural-functional, and analytical methods in the analysis of theoretical works of art, the subject field of which concerns the formation of club techno-culture in Ukraine in the context of Ukrainian audiovisual art development. Scientific novelty. The article analyzes the influence of cinema, television, and modern media on the spread of club culture in Ukraine, and systemizes the information obtained from periodicals and scientific domestic and foreign literature. The study can become a springboard for the development of topics in Ukrainian film studies and media theory. Conclusions. The article has analyzed the main factors influencing the spread of rave, indicates the stages of Ukrainian club life development; has identified the main factors and socio-political vectors that influenced the spread of club subculture, and has outlined the role of club life as a socio-cultural factor influencing the formation of domestic techno-culture). The development of music festival culture in Ukraine has been outlined as a way of joining the world culture, a stage of entering civilizational achievements, and an opportunity to express oneself in the world and in history.

Association and Enlightenment: Scottish Clubs and Societies, 1700-1830, ed. Marc C. Wallace and Jane Rendell

<i>Association and Enlightenment: Scottish Clubs and Societies, 1700-1830</i>, ed. Marc C. Wallace and Jane Rendell

Bicultural Identity &amp; Diet: A Study of Asian Americans and the Role of Schools

Over the past decade, Asian Americans (AA) were the fastest growing racial group in the U.S. Though numerous studies have identified factors, such as diet, language, and discrimination, as relevant players in the acculturation and identity formation processes of AA, few focus on the perspectives of AA youth, especially within the high school setting. The present study aims to investigate how Asian American high school students’ dietary habits are related to their perception of their bicultural identity. Moreover, it seeks to identify what culture-related challenges AA students face and potential supportive strategies for schools. Using a qualitative, phenomenological approach, 10 AA students were surveyed and interviewed at a suburban public high school in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. Through content analysis of the survey and interview data, a few themes emerged in the following categories: a) Dietary habits and bicultural identity, b) Challenges with bicultural identity, and c) Suggestions for schools. Results suggest a strong correlation between dietary habits and perceptions about their bicultural identity. Confusion about cultural identity and negative racial comments or stereotypes were among the challenges, internal and external, identified. In addition to existing factors that contribute to AA students’ sense of cultural belonging at school, like cultural clubs, potential suggestions for schools include greater AAPI representation in the curriculum, faculty, and food offered. Implications include the implementation of the suggestions at schools and future research on AA identity, cultural challenges, and diversity efforts inside and outside of school.

Berlin's queer archipelago: Landscape, sexuality, and nightlife

AbstractThe metaphor of the archipelago has informed ideas about Berlin's post‐war and post‐wall fractured urban landscape as well as recent work on sexual minorities in the city. In the context of Berlin's landscape, the image refers to green islands of spontaneous vegetation on sites left behind by bomb damage and border infrastructure, while in scholarship on sexuality, it suggests a more dispersed distribution of minority nightlife than in the traditional focus on the gayborhood. The two meanings come together in many of Berlin's electronic dance music clubs, which are located in overgrown voids—or Brachen in German—and form a queer archipelago outside the heteronormative grid. Drawing on insights from queer and ruderal ecology, as well as some of the memory literature from the early German reunification era, this paper explores these club islands in relation to the landscape term terrain vague. By focusing on two sites in the former East Berlin borough of Friedrichshain—Wriezener Park, next to the city's most famous club Berghain, and the Brache‐turned‐dance club ://about blank—Berlin's current status as a global centre for queer club culture is understood through the lens of its unusual urban landscape and spectral ecologies.

Subculture wars: The struggle for the vape industry.

Drawing on a 2-year study, I argue that the UK vape industry is engaged in a classificatory struggle between a subcultural industry and its "other", the mainstream industry. I build on Thornton's analysis of club culture to characterize the subcultural vape industry as a community of taste built round a masculine aesthetic and a commitment to authenticity and DIY practice. Its attachment to complex systems and masculine spaces risked excluding customers without specialist knowledge or interest. The mainstream industry included tobacco companies which promoted vaping as a complementary category to smoking, linking their own vaping products to historic meanings of the cigarette as a lifestyle product. This task was hampered by the toxic legacy of combusted tobacco and its increasing reversion to a generic category rather than a branded product. Finally, the success of the price-focused vaping industry has been largely overlooked, but suggests that for most consumers, electronic cigarettes are still a contrasting category to combusted tobacco and are purchased largely on price. I conclude that the exclusion of a feminized, classed "other" is a defining element of subcultural formation, itself an overwhelmingly male mechanism of group identity construction.

Impact of Japanese Popular Culture to Indonesian younger Generation:

The research probed into the influence of Japanese popular cultures on the Indonesian-younger generation in Cikarang, West Java, Indonesia. Japanese popular culture had been famed among the younger generation in Indonesia through the increasing popularity of anime. Indonesia, with 1.400 ethnic groups, had a variety of cultural diversity, but the younger generation seemed to be fonder of this foreign culture which in this case was Japanese popular culture. Through the expansion of this Japanese popular culture, Japanese culture could slip into it and could invade their local culture. This cultural expansion could have an impact on how the younger generation would preserve their local culture. Globalization also played a massive part in this cultural expansion; through the internet, it was easier to find something with foreign culture in it. The research used phenomenology research about the Japanese popular culture club of President University Nippon Community (PUNICO) in Cikarang. The research applied a qualitative approach with phenomenology methods. Data collection was done by asking the respondents questions regarding the matter. The respondents were ten members of PUNICO. The research result indicates that Japanese popular culture has been in the respondent's life long enough to change their habits and lifestyle. However, the respondents still care and have the volition to preserve their local cultures.